**A new video game mocks Donald Trump. **The White House is not amused.
Imagine you’re on trek in Greenland, hiking a snowy hill. You’re in one of the least-populated, most-isolated countries on Earth. Suddenly you stumble across a giant, old school, stand-up, arcade game box emblazoned with the image of President Donald Trump. His hair is blowing in an Arctic blast. There’s a golden igloo with “TRUMP” above the door. And Russian dictator Vladimir Putin… as a centaur?
Congratulations! You found “Operation Epic Furious: Nuuk ’Em All,” an arcade game, created by the anonymous protest group, The Secret Handshake. The parody digital quest pokes fun at Trump’s threats to invade the island nation. One life-sized console really is perched on that hill in Greenland, a vista overlooking Nuuk, the capital. Three more are located at the War Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where I showed up to play a couple rounds this afternoon.
“Nuuk ‘Em All” is the
second arcade gameinstallation by The Secret Handshake this year. And it seems to be just as big of a hit as the initial game — based on my own impression today — in one small example of how angry Americans continue to be with the Trump administration, with the midterms only weeks away.
Nearly a dozen people were hovering around the three consoles when I arrived. I had to wait 15 minutes for my turn — which made sense considering how much fun everyone was having. The gamers laughed, listened to the goofy arcade music, and debated which absurd choices to make. My personal favorite touch: Natalie Harp, Trump’s bizarre aide, is portrayed wearing a wedding dress and a MAGA hat.
One woman playing the game asked her husband for advice, after Trump mistakenly hit on his own daughter, Ivanka. The options: “Compliment her body,” “Ask her to sit on your lap,” and “Apologize and walk away.” When the woman pressed the last option, a message appeared: “404 error: Apology not found in Trump operating system.”
The White House hates this game, and has called the artists “
untalented.” The public would beg to differ.
“I think it’s great,” the husband told me
*. “*As a regular citizen, it feels like there is so little that we can actually do to protest this administration. Anybody that finds a way to do it publicly, using the law or using the First Amendment, I want to support that.”
**I came away with a burning question: **How the heck did The Secret Handshake get a massive arcade console to Greenland?
“It was honestly very difficult,” a spokesperson for the group told
What A Day.“A true ‘planes, trains, and automo...ships’ situation.”
No officials from Greenland or Denmark helped transport the console. “Turns out that the Arctic is actually quite far,” the spokesperson added. “It was a lot of logistics and finding a partner with experience working there to help guide us through the process.”
Shipping a video game console abroad as a publicity stunt is The Secret Handshake’s most ambitious undertaking to date. They gained fame for
placing a golden statueof Trump holding hands with deceased child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, as well as a 10-foot-tall “participation trophy” mocking the war, on the Mall.
At the end of “Nuuk ‘Em All,” Trump ends up “stuck in an endless loop of war in Iran,” the spokesperson said. “And that, sadly, is still just as true as when we released the Iran game almost half a year ago.”
**Don’t live in Nuuk or Washington? **Good news: You can play the game online here.
** GOP Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton privately **admitted to donors and lobbyists that Donald Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas last month hurt his odds of winning. “So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good,” Paxton said.
** Saudi Arabia arrested the pilot who stabbed another pilot **and tried to crash an early morning flight full of Israeli passengers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today. Passengers on board
** Right-wing groups are making money by pushing** a fundraising message signed by Sen John Fetterman (D-PA), in which he claims that socialists are “hijacking the Democratic party.” In one message to potential donors, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) wrote: “I just got an email from John. He’s basically a Republican now.” This comes days after Fetterman mistakenly called himself a “
** Burundi, a tiny country in East Africa, became the** latest foreign government to agree to receive deportees sent by the Trump administration from totally different countries.
** Meta has saved billions of dollars by telling the IRS **that building data centers is risky and experimental, in order to exploit a tax loophole, the
** Taxpayers spent $6.7 million last year picking up the tab** for House lawmakers’ meals and lodging in the nation’s capital — up 21 percent from the year prior, according to new data. The top three biggest spenders used more than $37,000 each. Don’t these guys make enough money to pay for their own dinner?!
** Or, maybe the mega-rich should foot the bill:** The top 0.1 percent of earners have gained $14.5 trillion since 2019, according to government data. They control about 15 percent of the country’s wealth. The average worth of a household in that category?
** Trump officials misspelled “United States” **on the president’s “super intelligence” executive order released yesterday. Glad to see they’re taking this whole AI thing seriously.
** Will Mark Carney win a Nobel Peace Prize** for standing up to Donald Trump? Buzz about the possibility is growing online and in prediction markets, even though there’s no actual evidence that the Canadian prime minister could be selected for the prize (which could be announced as soon as next week). Can you imagine Trump’s reaction if that happened? They’d be able to hear him yowl in Ontario!
** In other award season news, two women and two women-led **organizations were awarded the Right Livelihood Award today for their “resistance to systems that push people to the margins, and a shared insistence on putting people back at the center.” The recipients include a Pakistani lawyer, an AI researcher born in Ethiopia, a legal rights group in Georgia, and a network of women farmers across Southern Africa.
** More than 80 people drove their orange **Subaru Crosstreks to a tiny hilltown in Massachusetts for the second annual orange car parade over the weekend. “My heart is so FULL,” the organizer wrote
The Bronx Zoo unveiled its new snow leopard cub, Sarka, which translates to “Shark” in Nepalese.
** The internet is poking fun at a new bakery** in New York City that sells loaves for $60 each. The bread is actually very tasty, according to the
** Chunk has been dethroned! **A bear named Backpack won Alaska’s annual Fat Bear Week. Backpack has been described as a “gentleman” bear who doesn’t show much aggression toward his competitor, according to his online biography. “He’ll stand up for himself when necessary, but he prefers to use a quiet strength to gain access to preferred fishing spots.” Adorably, Backpack earned his name after being spotted clinging to the back of his mother, Holly, as a cub. (Holly also won Fat Bear Week years ago.)
